Isaiah 8:4
For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and my mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be taken away before the king of Assyria. For before the child shall have knowledge to cry, My father, and my mother, the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria shall be taken away before the king of Assyria.
Isaiah 8:4 belongs to the prophecy in Isaiah 7-9 concerning Ahaz and the coming Deliverer, and was spoken during the reign of King Ahaz. It reflects a time when God's people as a nation were in sin and in moral and physical darkness, on the verge of destruction in the shadow of death, yet even at that low depth had rays of light and hope for the future in the Messiah. It falls within the account of a conspiracy against Judah, and the conspiracies of that time serve as types of conspiracies in the last days.
In its immediate sense it foretells that before the child is old enough to speak the names for his father and mother, the king of Assyria will take away the riches of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria, defeating those kingdoms. The time limit indicated by the child's age to speak was probably about three years. The child's name means the spoil speeds and the prey hastens.
Careful study of Isaiah 8 shows where the expressions about the day of visitation, the desolation coming from far, fleeing for help, and leaving glory, later used in Isaiah 10:3, belong. Isaiah 8 is a warning against religious confederacies, applied to the religious world's confederacies preparing for the worldwide Armageddon conflict.